The Galleries of the Exposition eBook

Japan

The Japanese people, at the extreme southern end of
the Palace of Fine Arts, have a representative show
of painted screens, of extraordinary beauty.
Anyone, without being in the least familiar with the
fauna and flora of Japan, must admire the tremendously
acute power of observation and surety of drawing which
made these designs possible. The two sixfold
screens by Taisei Minakami on the east wall of the
eastern gallery are probably the most magnificently
daring examples of modern Japanese art. To the
student of design they offer a most stimulating opportunity
for study. Acutely observed, their tropical subjects,
very daring in colour, are exhaustively beautiful.
The spacing of the design, the relative distribution
of the few daring colours against a gold background
of wonderful texture, combine in a picture of great
vitality. The art of no people is so scientific
as that of these people, whose every effort, no matter
how insignificant, is technically always sound.
Our modern art schools could very profitably imitate
the Japanese principle of teaching their young students
how to do a thing well and of leaving the choice of
subjects to their own inclination.

Almost opposite, a vertical composition of a lumber
camp on a mountainside, by Bunto Hayashi, attracts
by an unusual subject very descriptively rendered.
The picture belongs to the older school, not so much
for the lack of colour, which is often erroneously
identified with the older Japanese works, as for a
certain quality of less decoration and of more detailed
treatment of the drawing. The drawing is, of
course, the important element in all Japanese art,
since all of their work has to yield a great deal
of pleasure of the intellectual kind at close distance,
on account of the smallness of Japanese dwellings,
which keeps the owner of the picture in close proximity
with his artistic possessions. A picture of crows
in a rainstorm, on the same wall, on the right side
of the southern door, and also a very characteristic
study of some kind of cedar, with birds on the left
of it, give one an excellent idea of the astonishing
variety of material that the Japanese artist successfully
controls.

In two irregularly shaped triangular galleries adjoining,
Shodo Hirata maintains the standard of the first gallery,
not to forget, either, Toyen Oka with his oleander
bush and the cat on the picturesque fence. Tesshu
Okajima’s hollyhock screens are marvels of decorative
simplicity, while Kangai Takakura uses a washday as
a motive for a double twofold screen decoration.
The last two artists can both be found in the second
irregular triangular gallery, opposite the first one
mentioned. The central octagonal gallery also
is devoted to screen pictures, done by means of embroidery.
Some of them, largely those of native design, are
successful in really giving the quality of the subjects
depicted, but cannot grow enthusiastic over two unduly